Karl Ernst

Karl Ernst (1 September 1904-30 June 1934) was the commandant of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Berlin at the time of the Night of the Long Knives, during which he was killed.

Biography
Karl Ernst was born on 1 September 1904 in Berlin, German Empire to a family of Protestant Germans, and he was a homosexual like virtually all of the chiefs of the Sturmabteilung (SA) under Ernst Rohm. He was a hotel bellboy and a gay nightclub bouncer before joining the Nazi Party, and on 27 February 1933 he was the leader of a group of Nazi stormtroopers that burnt down the Reichstag to give Germany the excuse to persecute communists in the country. However, in 1934 the SA angered Nazi chancellor Adolf Hitler when Rohm announced a "second revolution" to replace conservatism with socialism in Germany, and Hitler was forced by the German military to purge the brutes of the SA. On 30 June 1934, Ernst was executed with thirteen others at the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler barracks by Kurt Gildisch.